Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday June 30, 2013 @05:58PM
from the commerce-keeps-people-friendly dept.

After suing each other for the last few years in various courts around the world, you'd think that if Apple and Samsung were human beings they would have walked away from their rocky relationship a while back. The Wall Street Journal explains (beside the larger fact that they're both huge companies with complex links, rather than a squabbling couple) why it's so hard for Apple to take up with another supplier. Things are starting to look different, though: "Apple's deal this month to start buying chips from TSMC is a milestone. Apple long wanted to build its own processors, and it bought a chip company in 2008 to begin designing the chips itself. But it continued to rely on Samsung to make them. ... TSMC plans to start mass-producing the chips early next year using advanced '20-nanometer' technology, which makes the chips potentially smaller and more energy-efficient."

Um, not really, Apple needs Samsung, Samsung doesn't need apple. Samsung is one few companies that can keep the demand apple has for chips in its phones. Going from company size, Samsung is much larger and worth a lot more considering they make so many products where as Apple 95-98% of their profits are from 2 product's

If Apple disappeared and 1 Infinite Loop became an instant smoking crater, the market demand for cell phones with Samsung chips and displays would not disappear. So some other company would make those cell phones with Samsung chips and displays in them. Perhaps an enlarged division of Samsung. Perhaps some other customer of Samsung.

The fact that a bunch of speculators leapt at a rumor like that is more a reflection of how flaky investors are, not a reflect on anything about Samsung.

Um, not really, Apple needs Samsung, Samsung doesn't need apple. Samsung is one few companies that can keep the demand apple has for chips in its phones. Going from company size, Samsung is much larger and worth a lot more considering they make so many products where as Apple 95-98% of their profits are from 2 product's

Samsung's electronics division is a mini corporation within the Samsung empire that cares more about what Apple is doing than what most of the rest of the Samsung empire is doing. At the moment Samsung is making a bundle off of every iPhone, iPad and iPod sold by Apple on top of what they are making from their own like of tablets and smartphones and that has to count as a pretty nice win-win situation. I can't imagine that the bean counters at Samsung are happy at the prospect of a major smartphone and tablet computer manufacturer who commands 20% of the smartphone market and 40% of the tablet computer market (and the lucrative high end segments of those markets at that), will in future be spending money that previously flowed into Samsung 's coffers with Samsung's competitors.

Um, not really, Apple needs Samsung, Samsung doesn't need apple. Samsung is one few companies that can keep the demand apple has for chips in its phones. Going from company size, Samsung is much larger and worth a lot more considering they make so many products where as Apple 95-98% of their profits are from 2 product's

TSMC plans to start mass-producing the chips early next year using advanced '20-nanometer' technology, which makes the chips potentially smaller and more energy-efficient.

Assuming TSMC can really start churning high millions of chips on a brand new 20nm process reliably. Seems unlikely considering how often they have had teething problems with new processes in the past.

You don't just buy a machine that turns raw silicone into CPUs or radios. It is of course far too early to predict what will happen but there is a huge amount of risk involved for Apple. It really wouldn't surprise me if new hardware gets delayed or fitted with parts built on an older process as TSMC struggle

Assuming TSMC can really start churning high millions of chips on a brand new 20nm process reliably. Seems unlikely considering how often they have had teething problems with new processes in the past.

According to the article, they've been doing trial runs for a few years. It's not unthinkable that they've worked out the teething issues during that time.

Also, it's reportedly just new chips going to TSMC. That makes some sense -- there's work and money to get an existing design moved to a new process. So Samsung's still going to be making A5s or A6s for the near future. And maybe other stuff -- there's certainly a contract between Apple and Samsung that has to be run out. And it's pretty unlikely Apple would bet on a new process. They haven't so far.. the chips Samsung did for them usually started out in a more conservative process. Whether that's Apple bei

Arrangements like Apple's and Samsung's may sound strange at first but it happens a lot more than one might think. I work for a very large French company that has its own in-house IT services group, yet my subsidiary handles the majority of its IT operations on its own, including using external hosting companies and service providers that directly compete with them. We can get away with it because we execute faster, with better flexibility, higher quality, and for less money.

BTW, controlling the manufacturing isn't the advantage some make it out to be. It's a very low-margin industry, which is why so much of it is done in low-wage places like China. If bringing manufacturing in-house had strategic value then you can be assured that Apple and any other company with a decent mountain of cash would work on acquiring such capabilities. Take a look at Sony- nobody is citing their in-house manufacturing as a key differentiator or advantage.

Arrangements like Apple's and Samsung's may sound strange at first but it happens a lot more than one might think. I work for a very large French company that has its own in-house IT services group, yet my subsidiary handles the majority of its IT operations on its own, including using external hosting companies and service providers that directly compete with them. We can get away with it because we execute faster, with better flexibility, higher quality, and for less money.

manufacturing? this is about manufacturing of parts that you pretty much can't buy from anyone else, and the next years models of the parts you can't either...

as for apple, it's just not in their textbook and they're doing fine as it is. they would have to magic recruit half of samsungs key people and kicking up chip production lines is a process that takes billions and years to do and even then it's risky if they can match the quality of process to actually compete. it's a nasty cutthroat business which ca

While "need" might be subjective, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how the internet continues to believe that Samsung doesn't care about Apple as a customer.

Even accounting for the fact that these articles are a bit dated (and I do mean a bit - one is months old and the other is less than a year old), it's clear that Apple is a SIGNIFICANT part of Samsung's finances.

Now they are just riding it out, both laughing all the way to the bank.

Wow. Ironically Apple could have manufactured themselves under Steve Jobs regime but instead chose through cost saving go elsewhere(Samsung). They famously laughed at the president at the suggestion of bringing Apple Manufacturing to the states, and now are having the unpleasant sunrise of of their top (and only) phone looking mid range and 12-18 months out of date at launch. While Samsung refresh a product range every three months. Now thousands of patents are on various hardware components by various Korean and Chinese companies....with Apple having relatively few design & interface patents, admittedly with a friendly court system looking favourably at them.

Thankfully Jobs does not have to live with the consequences of this...as he died, but in context of going to the bank article...Apple is going to the bank with less profits (less market share, less market cap, less brand value, less cutting edge, less interesting products, less news, less innovation). At least Dell finally got to say I told you so.

It was always about Apple saturation marketing. Even this article falls for the trap, Apple designed chip, what bloody Apple designed chip. Three other companies chips, stuck on a daughter board and called a chip does not make it a chip beyond Apple marketing.

Apple has licensed the ARM cpu design, PowerVR GPU, and Qualcomm radios for years. They may design the layout, but not the IP. As far as I'm aware, only Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Marvell have ARM architecture licenses that allow them to design custom logic compatible with the v7/v8 instruction sets. Everyone else is building SOC's with the reference implementation provided by ARM.

As far as I'm aware, only Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Marvell have ARM architecture licenses that allow them to design custom logic compatible with the v7/v8 instruction sets. Everyone else is building SOC's with the reference implementation provided by ARM.

Manufactured what? Chips? Apple never did that, and I'm not sure it would have made sense for them to own Their Very Own Foundry. LCD panels? See previous comment. Systems? Samsung doesn't do that for Apple, an assortment of companies, most but not all Chinese/Taiwanese, do so [apple.com] (although that page claims some company named "Apple" also assembles Macs in Cork, so they're probably Irish:-)).

Now thousands of patents are on various hardware components by various Korean and Chinese companies....with Apple having relatively few design & interface patents,

Just out of curiosity, has anybody trawled through various patent databases to get numbers on that? Apple has a n

Oh look. Yet another benchmark showing how superior a new handset is...yet every new handset is still laggy and jerky, including the S3

Actually the CPU allows you to run better(give it a name) programs at higher resolutions. Its why Flash was not the problem for Android that it is for Apple. Google put an awful lot of effort into improving things like responsiveness. Goolge finally managed to put this lie to sleep with Project Butter http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/27/3118769/android-4-1-jelly-bean [theverge.com].

Project Butter hasn't effectively made its way into every handset yet. Not even a Galaxy S3 (that was last year's flagship device on VZW) running stock ROM. Still have plenty of lag. I distinctly prefer Android over iOS, but my wife's iPhone never staggers the same way that my GS3 does a few times a day.

Oh look. Yet another benchmark showing how superior a new handset is...yet every new handset is still laggy and jerky, including the S3

Actually the CPU allows you to run better(give it a name) programs at higher resolutions. Its why Flash was not the problem for Android that it is for Apple. Google put an awful lot of effort into improving things like responsiveness. Goolge finally managed to put this lie to sleep with Project Butter http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/27/3118769/android-4-1-jelly-bean [theverge.com].

It's telling you are speaking outside your area of expertise, there's a rather large optimization gap between Apple's in-house iOS vs Samsung's use of Android.

Agreed. I liked what I've heard about the Galaxy Note II, so I took a look at one that was on display at a local electronics store. Oh, the hardware looks really nice, but the user interface is nasty and cluttered compared to iOS, and animations were jerky and dropped frames. To some extent this may have been due to all the crapware AT&T loaded

To be fair, I've never understood why Samsung allows their demo models to be so terrible to use. The Galaxy Tab's on display to play with, I couldn't believe how laggy/slow they were compared to the one I had (pre messing about with custom roms). Don't know if it's because of the demo software/out of date OS, or lesser hardware to save a few bucks on a device that isn't actually sold, but yeah, when you play with one in a store, and one that someone actually owns, the difference is incredibly noticeable.

top (and only) phone looking mid range and 12-18 months out of date at launch

Samsung's phones might be more cutting edge at launch. But in 1+ year, the iPhone will still be supported by (decent) software updates, and the Samsung phone will be long forgotten for the latest and greatest.

Interesting I have seen a launch of what is dubbed "Google Play edition phones"(including samsung) from a few manufacturers that come with stock android. In response to this very issue. They now come with Vanilla Android and will be easier to update. Apple conversely is expanding their product line instead of using older models as a product line so expect support lengths to drop dramatically.

Even with Steve.The competition is across Business Units, Not the actually Businesses.

Companies like Microsoft, Samsung, Sony, Apple... Have a lot of different Units making a slue of different stuff. Chances are these big technology companies will make something the other guy is making, Thus they will be competing to get dominance for that product. However these guys also have a fair amount of stuff that is unique to them. Where the other Companies Business unit is the Valued Customer for that piece.

So to what company are you referring here? Apple never fabbed their own chips; they have designed their own support chips (although, these days, the Mac probably mainly use Intel and/or Nvidia support chips); they do much of the design (and, no, I don't mean just "styling") work on their machines; and they do a lot of the software engineering. I don't know whether assembly was ever a core competency, but a lot of the other stuff Apple doesn't do is stuff they never did, and the design and engineering work

I have a Samsung flip phone I bought in 2004 or '05 (this one [deviceatlas.com]). Let a friend borrow it for a couple of weeks after he his was destroyed* while visiting here last month. Still has good reception and voice quality, and lasts about 3 days between charges.

(*And therein lies a tale. I'll include it in my memoirs.)

He also got hooked on the (Java) photo fishing game, and tried to buy the phone from me so he could keep playing it.

One very nice advantage to the form factor (if you're male, or not, but wear guys' jea

'Or are you too dumb not to question why a company that makes the CPUs and retina displays for Apple can't use them in their own product line."

first off there are patents, which both accuse the other of violating, next of all there is the fact that ios doesn't come with 'knowing' how to make the parts, which you claim samsung doesn't know despite making them. of course the agreement to not reuse apple tech is needed because well we all know how the government feels about patents and trademarks. especially i

I don't really know about the speed--they seem roughly the same to me--but the part about her being peeved is true.

I generally avoid Apple products for other reasons, but the phone itself seems okay. One thing I must give Apple credit for regarding the software, though... WTF was with you, Google, that you should overlook something that every other OS on the planet has had since 1985, namely UNDO? Seriously, Windows Three Fucking One had undo functionality. What were you thinking?

I have a 285mb video i copied to the iPhone, how do I easily without some shit crud http method, transfer that file to the iPad? Or use the iPad as a 2nd screen and play the video on the iPhone to the iPad like AirPlay?

IOS sharing of files or data between apps without the internet, is impossible. About the only data type allowed is photos, because they have to let any photo app load and edit photos. Where is the my docs folder, or my files that any app can access.

To be fair, Samsung are guilty of some of the same sort of BS--the Galaxy S3 and later phones are MTP-only, as are the Tab 10.2s (do any of the big players even make a tablet with a standard USB port?), thus a big part of the reason for the existence and popularity of apps like AirDroid [airdroid.com] (which I've used and think is pretty damn spanky). I am pretty sure the decision to *replace* a tried-and-true protocol that *everything* in the damned world supports with an "ooh, NEW SHINY SHINY MUST HAVE IT EVEN THOUGH WE

The iPhone sucks, because you're treated as if you're a child. Can't go into 18+ rooms on Camfrog, you're stuck to General (which usually has more vulgarity and that's where you find most of the wankers jacking off on camera ANYWAYS) or Camfrog-sponsored rooms (which universally suck.)

My POS ZTE Score treats me like an adult, and runs rings around the iPhone in terms of software availability and freedom.

retina Display has become synonymous with Low DPI as 1080P becomes the new normal for Android

That's true on smartphones, but on the tablet side, Apple still has better DPI than any Android device except the Nexus 10. Samsung's flagship Galaxy Note 10.1 still has a mediocre 1280x800 display, which is worse than some newer smartphones. And I haven't seen a replacement with a high-DPI display announced yet.

Samsung does seem to be making some efforts to bring high-DPI displays to Windows laptops. They have an

Samsung and LG own all the patents on the LCDs used in the retina screens. Keep in mind they are pretty low end screens, not even 720p HD, where as those guys are both using 1080p as standard on their own high end models.

Apple doesn't really invent much tech. They are mostly a design company. They take technology from other companies and integrate it, then patent the overall design. That's why they are having problems with FRAND patents - they don't have any to license in return so have to pay cash.

That's why they are having problems with FRAND patents - they don't have any to license in return so have to pay cash.

How come you are such an expert on this? Because you sound so damned sure of yourself, yet I know for a fact that Apple does have FRAND patents. For example the ones on x264 that they worked on, or the digital camera ones worked on with Kodak, or even the wireless ones bought from Nortel.

Most folks in the (fab-less) semiconductor industry are referencing the foundry business model [wikipedia.org] of TSMC. In the historical foundry business model, a foundry is where you can contract to have *custom* metal parts forged. In modern usage, SEH would generally be considered a supplier to TSMC, since the silicon wafer is more of a *standard* part, not a *custom* part.

SEH might have been considered analogous to foundry of sorts since a historical metal-works foundry poured metal into casts and finished them and SE

In common usage TSMC is the foundry not Apple (even if apple started buying equipment to process wafers, then it would simply be running a captive fab).

FWIW, the common terms of large foundry contracts have varied greatly over the last few decades. Some examples of "pure" pricing models:

* wafer starts (to reserve some fraction of capacity)* processed wafers (that had their wafer process monitor circuits working within a range of pre-agreed parameters).* working die (pre-diced chips that pass a short custom

"Potentially" makes them smaller and more power efficient. Or rather "does" but the reporter isn't knowledgeable enough to know one way or another. And the real reason for the switch? TSMC will be shipping 20nm, and Samsung wont be for months and months and months, they haven't even announced a switch to a smaller process.

Apple tends towards sticking the highest quality components it can find in its devices, and next year TSMC will provide that while Samsung won't be. Not hard to figure out why the switch i

>"Potentially" makes them smaller and more power efficient. Or rather "does" but the reporter isn't knowledgeable enough to know one way or another.

No. The reporter is spot on. While in the past doing a simple shrink without redesign or significant relayout would always give power and area savings, the same is no longer true, since energy density and leakage may go up faster than dynamic power goes down. So you may need to re-layout to dilute the heat concentrations and you may find yourself consuming more power.

These days, adding advanced power features to chips is a necessary step to yield the full power and area benefits of denser transistors. Witness the power and area improvements in Haswell over Ivy Bridge, while the process (22nm) stayed fairly constant.

Sometimes the perception of conflict really works well because it draws media attention to those involved: almost like some free advertising. For the longest time, Coca Cola and Pepsi played up on the public's perception of bitter competition and conflict. In reality, the competition is a good bit friendlier with the executives at each company respecting their counterparts; If you recall, a few years ago someone tried to steal a recipe from Coke and hand it to Pepsi. Pepsi Co ended up reporting this to authorities.

Sometimes the perception of conflict really works well because it draws media attention to those involved: almost like some free advertising. For the longest time, Coca Cola and Pepsi played up on the public's perception of bitter competition and conflict. In reality, the competition is a good bit friendlier with the executives at each company respecting their counterparts; If you recall, a few years ago someone tried to steal a recipe from Coke and hand it to Pepsi. Pepsi Co ended up reporting this to auth

"TSMC plans to start mass-producing the chips early next year using advanced '20-nanometer' technology, which makes the chips potentially smaller and more energy-efficient."

I'll believe this when I see it. TSMC has a chronic problem with moving to smaller process nodes; they've got a long history of over-promising and under-delivering. Oh, they eventually get it right, but early customers are basically paying for the privilege of being their beta testers, and Apple is going to find this out if they try to move away from Samsung too quickly. NVIDIA's infamous "bumpgate" fiasco was due, at least in part, to problems with an immature TSMC manufacturing process.

We'd screw up scraps of paper and throw them at each other. Here is their 'rich corporate' version: pay expensive lawyers to writelots of 'legal magick' words on lots of expensive paper, then pay expensive lawyers to throw said paper on behalf of the corporation.Essentially it's a mischievous children's activity for those with money to burn. Both corporations can easily pay their 'big' losses, and neitherhas anything useful to do with the winnings except pay more lawyers to throw more 'paper sno

I'm just thinking out loud but, could he be taking bribes from Samsung (or others) to make himself rich on the sidelines?...

From his Wikipedia Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Cook [wikipedia.org] "In early 2012, he was awarded compensation of 1 million shares, vesting in 2016 and 2021, by Apple's Board of Directors.[5] As of 2012, Cook's total compensation package of US$378 million makes him the highest paid CEO in the world"